Thursday legends - Skinner 10

by Quintin Jardine

  They stepped inside. The cottage was gloomy, but there was no Hansel-and-Gretel feel about it. 'No-one's lived here for a long time,' said Maggie, shivering. 'A heat wave outside and yet in here it's freezing.' She saw a light switch beside the door and flicked it on. 'Electricity's working though.'

  'Okay,' Mario muttered, opening a door on his right. 'No hide-and-seek games, Alec, please.'

  His wish was answered at once as he stepped into the cottage's living-room-cum-kitchen. There in the centre of the floor stood a big, grey, cubic metal shape. He switched on the light and knelt beside it.

  'Bugger it!' he called out at once. 'He didn't need to hide this thing. This is a Guardian safe; hand-built, top security, with a combination lock. Whatever the third key's for, it's not this.'

  'Can we open it?'

  'Johnny Ramensky couldn't have opened this in a hurry, Chief Inspector. I know all about this bastard; it's got a heat-resistant titanium-alloy outer casing over a lead lining, making it virtually explosive-proof. You get two shots at the combination; get it wrong twice and the locking mechanism freezes for good.'

  'So how do we open it?'

  'Unless Alec's left the combination somewhere, or unless we get very lucky, we're going to have to cut it open; and that'll take something hotter than the blowlamp that was used on ex-DCI Smith. We'll need to get the thing back to Fettes and work at it there. Can we get a heavy vehicle in here and the six guys it's going to take to lift this?'

  'There is a vehicular access on the map, from a road that leads up to Dirleton, but it's overgrown. Mr McCart suggested that we come the way we did because it's easier.'

  'It can't be that bad, because this thing was brought here. But if the road has grown over again since then we'll just have to bulldoze a way through it.' He sighed, in frustration. 'This is going to hold us back by a couple of days at least, you know; Alec Bloody Smith's done us again.'

  'Maybe,' said Maggie, 'but he's told us something too. If he invested in this level of security, then he really did have something to protect.'

  60

  'I've just spoken to Mitchell Laidlaw, out in KL,' said Skinner. He was sitting in his conservatory, holding Seonaid in the crook of his left arm and the phone in his right hand. The baby grinned up at him and gurgled; he made a point of spending personal time every day with each of his three children, the infant included.

  He shifted awkwardly in his big upholstered cane chair. Somewhere inside its plaster, his lower left leg was developing an unreachable itch which threatened to drive him to screaming point.

  'He and the Daybelge man have had two days of negotiations with the Golden Crescent people. The deal's still alive. The Malaysians have given them four weeks to brief their major clients; if they can hold most of them in, they'll complete, on adjusted terms.' He laughed. 'Mitch is like a dog with two cocks in a stand of trees. He loves to win and he's scored big out there.'

  'But what about Paris Simons, sir?' asked Dan Pringle. 'What about the man Heard?'

  'That's one reason why he's so pumped up and it's the reason why I'm calling you. The Malaysians told him that Luke Heard turned up unannounced in KL last week with his legal adviser ... who just happens to be Mitch Laidlaw's biggest rival. He made a big pitch to replace Daybelge in the deal. He offered better terms and... he told them that Howard

  Shearer was about to be discredited.

  'Mr Rezak, the CEO of Golden Crescent, said to Mitch that he heard him out, then threw him out. He told him that he had checked Shearer out thoroughly and that he would have to be dead to be discredited in his eyes. Only then, he said, would he consider Paris Simons, and even then any deal would be conditional upon Luke Heard leaving the firm.

  'This didn't faze Heard one bit apparently. He said that the first stipulation was out of his hands, but that the second was no problem to him, given the sort of money under discussion. Rezak said, "In that case I pray for Mr Shearer's good health," and terminated the meeting.'

  'Oh aye,' said the Superintendent, heavily.

  'Indeed, Daniel, indeed. The timing of Heard's visit in itself looked odd, but add in the remark about the Diddler and it moves up a notch.'

  'Should I get a DNA sample off him, d' you think, sir, to compare with the hairs in the shower in Coltbridge? He did offer violence to Shearer after all, at that party.'

  'No point,' the DCC replied. 'Heard didn't kill the Diddler, not no way. I don't know the guy, but I've seen him around the New Club from time to time. He's got a withered left arm. Whoever swung that baseball bat did so with maximum force, gripping it with both hands. Luke Heard has to eat with his fork in his right hand, the other's so weak.

  'No, Dan. Don't confront Heard; investigate him. Find out everything you can about him, and most importantly, who his known associates are. Everybody knows somebody, who knows somebody...

  'Find out a bit more about the party incident too. Most probably my friend Andrew John was there; he's an AGM on

  the business side of the bank. Have a word with him and tell him I sent you.'

  Skinner ended the call, then dialled the number of the Special Branch office. DC Alice Cowan answered, and put him through to Mario McGuire. 'What progress with that safe?' he asked, without preamble.

  'Bloody nightmare, Boss,' McGuire grunted. 'The vehicle access to the cottage has about three years' worth of overgrowth on it. It'll take all day to clear that. I'm using Guardian Security people, all with top clearance, to collect the thing. I've also spoken to the Guardian division that made the bloody thing ... and that was where I really got depressed.

  'The safe was built to Alec's specifications, just after he joined the group. The way it's built, it's going to take about three days to cut through, if it comes to that. But this is the real sickener. Alec had a booby-trap device built into it; if it's ever opened by any means other than the combination lock, every piece of paper inside it will be incinerated.

  'I asked Guardian to give me a specialist locksmith to get inside. They warned me that nobody can, but they promised to send someone along anyway.'

  'Have you thought about recruiting your own specialist?' Skinner asked. 'Maybe there's someone in a jail somewhere, who could open it for a year or two's remission of sentence.'

  'Yes, sir, I thought of that. But Guardian assured me that no-one's ever cracked one of these. They know where they all are and every one is still virgo intacta.'

  'Fuck it,' the DCC whispered.

  'That's my point, Boss. We can't. I've got the Guardian people going through the detailed drawing of the safe right now, looking for a potential weakness, but they told me they'd be surprised and disappointed if they find any.

  'The way things stand we will not get into that safe without Alec Smith's personal combination ... and DCI Smith was not the man to leave it lying around for us to find. I'm pretty sure it was stored away in his head when he died. Stevie Steele's already asked the wife if she knew; but he never as much as told her what day of the week it was.'

  'What about the usuals? First four letters of pi, wife's date of birth and so on?'

  'Pick any two from a couple of dozen commonly used, sir. We've only got two shots at getting it right. After that the lock will freeze up and it'll be easier to get in and out of Chernobyl intact.'

  'If it comes to it, Mario, you may have to take those two shots, and hope that the magic ingredient's on your side.'

  He put the phone down and shifted the baby in his arms. 'Where's your mummy then?' he asked her, as he raised her, kicking and chortling above his head 'Cutting up cadavers? Or making our lunch? Or both?

  'Ann. There she is.' Through the open conservatory doors he saw Sarah, in white shirt and cut-away denim shorts, pluck James Andrew from the top of his brightly-coloured climbing frame. She turned towards him, to exchange one child for another, he guessed.

  She was in the doorway, arms outstretched to take Seonaid, when the phone rang again. His burden gone, he picked it up, to hear Andy Martin's crisp, sombre
voice.

  'Morning, Bob. How's the stookey?'

  'Itching like hell - which my wife tells me is probably a good sign.'

  'For the sake of all concerned,' Martin grunted dryly. 'I thought I should bring you up to date on something. We've now completed a full trawl through DVLA and through all the manufacturers and importers of the sort of vehicle that hit you on Saturday. There haven't been that many supplied countrywide in black or very dark blue, with the tint of glass you describe, but there are some.

  'Spike Thomson, for example, has a black Toyota Landcruiser with smoked glass windows ...'

  'Spike?' Skinner snapped. 'He's another Legend!'

  'I knew you'd say that,' the Head of CID countered. 'Forget the Legends link, for God's sake, and forget Spike. When that car hit you he was broadcasting live to East Central Scotland, filling in for one of the weekend presenters who's on holiday. His vehicle also has a factory-fitted alarm and immobiliser system which makes it thief-proof.

  'However, one other potential suspect car, a black Range Rover with glass to match, was reported stolen in Barnton on Sunday evening, after the owner and his wife got back from a weekend away in their other car, and was discovered this morning, junked in a small gorge up behind Nunraw. It's bashed to hell, but we're going all over the inside for prints and looking at the body work to see if we can find anything clinging to it; fibres from your jeans, for example.'

  Skinner sighed. 'Okay,' he said heavily. 'Maybe it was someone with an unconnected grudge. Maybe Scotland did Alec, right enough. Maybe this man Luke Heard did hire someone to batter Diddler unrecognisable. Maybe my Legends theory is all balls.

  'But I want you to do one thing for me, Andy. I heard you on radio yesterday, selling the concept of the detective as the true forensic scientist. Now I want you to prove it. I want you to gather together all the evidence in all three cases, including the attack on me, and I want you to examine it minutely.

  'Strand by strand, boy, strand by strand ... and see if you can tie just two of them together. If you can, the rest will fall into place just like that ... a web, with a big and very poisonous spider right at the centre.'

  61

  Dan Pringle's experience of bank managers had left him unimpressed; but Andrew John was different. For a start, he was a friend of Bob Skinner, and the Big Man did not surround himself with tedious or foolish people. But even more significantly than that, Pringle knew him of old.

  More than thirty years before, the young Constable Pringle had occasionally drawn what were euphemistically known as crowd-control duties at Easter Road, home of Hibernian Football Club. He remembered the teenage wing-half who had forced his way into the side; one-footed but skilled, if not quite in the manner of Baxter or Puskas, a good passer of the ball and a solid tackier, and capable of bursting out of mid-field to change the course of a match.

  Young Andrew John had flourished briefly in that sixties season, until visiting sides realised that he was at his most effective when Hibs were playing down their notorious slope, yet strangely anonymous and one-paced for the other half of the game. Word spread and he was marked accordingly.

  The bubble had burst one winter day with the Hibees three-nil down to Falkirk before a sparse and unenthusiastic crowd, slogging uphill into cold sleety rain. Pringle had been there when it happened, when the wag had stood up in the front row of the season-ticket area and shouted, as the struggling midfielder allowed a blue-shirted opponent to evade him, 'See you, son, you're deceptively slow!'

  Breaking all the unwritten rules, and a couple that were written, the young player had stopped and glared up into the murky stand. His hopes of lasting stardom in senior football, of great days at Hampden Park and around the world, all ended in that moment.

  A month later he had been sent back to the reserves and, eighteen months after that, he had quit the game to concentrate on his career in banking, where there were, in those days at least, no hecklers.

  'I saw you play, you know,' Detective Superintendent Pringle told him across the desk in his St Andres Square office. 'See if you'd had two good feet—'

  'I'd have finished playing at thirty-five,' the banker retorted, 'and have come to see a guy like me to beg him to lend me the money to buy a wee pub somewhere. Now if I was a young player today, I'd work at it until I had two feet - and I'd do hill running as part of my training.

  'Everybody used to laugh at the teams that trained on sand dunes, you know.' He paused. 'Don't start me reminiscing, or we'll be here all day. What can I do for you? You said when you phoned that it was something to do with the Diddler.'

  Pringle nodded. 'That's right; the Shearer investigation. It's come to my attention that there was an incident at a bank function for business customers last Christmas. The Deputy Chief Constable suggested that I should get in touch with you. He hoped you might be able to tell us something about it, or you might remember a colleague who saw it.'

  Andrew John gave a short, gruff laugh. 'Hah, that's come out, has it? I should have known it would.

  'I saw it myself, Superintendent. Very unpleasant it was, at the time. Afterwards, the Diddler asked me to say no more

  about it, so I've never discussed it with anyone, until now.

  'The man Heard must have had a drink before he got there, or he must have been going at the champagne flat out, for the party hadn't been going for very long before he started niggling away at the Diddler. In company too, it was; completely out of order.' The banker looked down and shook his head. 'Very unpleasant.'

  'What happened exactly? We were told that the man took a punch at Mr Shearer.'

  'Eventually, but there were a lot of verbals before that. Heard went on and on, just chipping away. The wee man tried to ignore him; I even took him away to another group, but the guy followed us. Finally, the Diddler said something back to him, something mild by comparison ... I think he joked that Paris Simons couldn't invest in a book of stamps without losing on the deal.

  'That was all the excuse that Luke Heard needed; he dropped his glass and took a swing at the Diddler with his good arm.'

  'Did he hit him?'

  'No, no, he was well gone by then; he missed by a mile. The wee man saw it coming and ducked out of the way. I stepped in at that point, got hold of Heard and huckled him out the door. I told him that he wouldn't be welcome at another bank function until he apologised for his behaviour, both to the Diddler and to the Governor of the bank.

  'All the top brass were all there, you know. They all saw it.'

  'What did Heard say to Mr Shearer?'

  John looked the policeman in the eye. 'He said, "I'll fucking kill you, you little bastard." His very words.'

  Pringle remained deadpan. 'But before that?' he asked.

  'Before it got to that stage. What sort of things did he say?'

  'Ach, it was just unpleasant stuff. Bitterness, jealousy, nothing really; it wasn't just the Diddler he was niggling at. His partner, Johnston-White, he was there too.'

  'Okay, but can you be more specific about what was actually said?'

  'The gist of it was that Daybelge would do anything to get business. You could have taken the inference that they would lay on sexual favours of any sort for clients. At one point, he said that they were a bunch of faggots.'

  'Do you know what was behind it? Where this hatred of Heard's came from?'

  'It goes back to time immemorial, so the Diddler told me afterwards. He and Luke Heard were at university together; they were the two brightest people in their year, but the Diddler was brighter. Heard hates to lose at anything, so the problems started back then. There was quite a bit of animosity and, according to the Diddler, it got worse when he met Edith, because Heard had gone out with her first.

  'It calmed down after they graduated, for they went their separate ways for a while. The Diddler went off to work with an investment house in London and Heard went straight into Paris Simons.

  'Seven or eight years after that, Paris Simons decided to appoint a
strategist, someone at partnership level responsible for long-term investment decisions. Heard assumed that he would get the job, but instead, the senior partner of the day went out and head-hunted the Diddler. Animosity turned to hatred then. The Diddler told me that he could have had Heard blown out the door, but he didn't. It turned out to be a big mistake, for the guy formed a sort of rival cabal within the partnership; there were disputes and arguments over every major decision, even although the senior partner always came down on the Diddler's side.

  'Then one day, said senior partner - his name was Rawlinson - dropped dead in the car park. The Diddler had enough votes on the board to get the job, but he knew that if he did, Heard and his clique would leave and set up their own firm. So he beat them to the punch. He left Paris Simons to them and founded Daybelge, taking a couple of partners and a few big clients with him.

  'Six months later, the Stock Market crashed. Today, just about every fund manager under the sun will claim to have seen it coming and to have gone liquid in anticipation, but the Diddler was one of very, very few who actually did. When it happened, the investment trusts which he had set up were holding nothing but gilts and cash.

  'With the market on the floor, he reinvested in blue-chip companies and sunrise industries. When the smoke cleared, Daybelge was far and away the biggest independent fund manager in Scotland, and probably the most respected in Britain.

  'The Diddler may have been a rotten footballer, a real wee gossip and a fornicating little bugger, but as a fund manager he was a bloody genius. That was why he would have landed the Golden Crescent deal, no question.'

  Pringle tugged at an end of his moustache. 'Aye,' he said, 'the Golden Crescent deal. I've heard about that.'

  'I think that was what prompted the hostilities at the Christmas party,' Andrew John suggested. 'It was only a rumour back then, but already the talk was that Daybelge was the top target.'

  'Did Heard make any reference to it?'